1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to a method and an apparatus for mold processing using V-CAD data, which can store entity data combining a shape and a physical property by small memory capacity.
2. Background Art
Many mechanical parts are molded by using molds, and a mold is indispensable for inexpensively manufacturing high-quality mechanical parts in high volume. That is, the mold is extensively used for press molding, casting, injection molding and others.
However, it has been considered that manufacture of the mold requires a long period of time and cost. That is, the mold is manufactured in the order of design, mold processing, assembling/finishing, trying/modification and others, and an NC processing program for the mold processing and the mold processing require most of the time.
As shown in a type drawing of FIG. 1A, when CAD data of a final product 1 is obtained by the mold design, the NC processing program of an NC control apparatus is produced from this data, thereby performing the mold processing.
As shown in FIG. 1B, a large part of the processing of a mold 5 is milling using an end mill 2, and light cutting using a small-diameter tool is the main in the mold processing in which many complicated shapes are processed. Therefore, a trajectory of the small-diameter tool for the processing has a small pitch corresponding to a processing width as shown in FIG. 1C, and the processing accuracy of the mold is determined by this trajectory. Thus, the NC processing program becomes complicated and extravagant, and the processing time also becomes long because of the small processing width.
Further, in order to solve this drawback, when large and small tools are replaced to perform processing, the NC processing program must be produced in accordance with each tool, and the program production becomes further complicated.